


Your Eyes Aren't Rivers There to Weep

by bizzybee



Category: Beyonders Series - Brandon Mull
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, a very short one, aka the story of how corinne processes her trauma !, was possessed by brainworms this was the result
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24364966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bizzybee/pseuds/bizzybee
Summary: A glimpse at Corinne's life inside the tree.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	Your Eyes Aren't Rivers There to Weep

**Author's Note:**

> Title based off of "Marbles" by the Amazing Devil.
> 
> I for one think Corinne deserved to process her trauma! So I'm doing it for her.

Corinne is a killer. 

She knows this. It’s in her nature. The people she is killing are vicious, are serving an evil cause. In fact, the only way Corinne knows that the evil in this land hasn’t been eradicated yet is the irregular arrival of his servants. 

Still, though, it doesn’t make it easier to greet them, to feed them, to drug them, to slit their throats. 

Ever since her mother died, the only company she gets are enemies and the soon-to-be-dead.

It’s a lonely life, she thinks as she collapses in her rocking chair, not-yet-bloody knife tapping against the palm of one hand. Two conscriptors lay on her bed, drugged and unconscious. She eyes them warily. 

Corinne has been told she is kind, before. She’s been told she is beautiful, and sweet, and welcoming. She has been told this by people she’s killed. 

And these two are no different, she thinks, momentarily sheathing her knife to roll them onto the floor. 

When she’s finished, she scrubs her hands in swamp water until the red stains fade to the green of algae and stagnant water. 

She mops her floors. She cleans her knife. She considers sleeping early. The haze of the sun is still high in the sky, but days that add to her body count always exhaust her. 

Regardless, though, she reminds herself, she has a routine for a reason. A routine she must stick to, even when other people interrupt it. 

Sighing, she puts away her knife and picks up her sword. Swordplay always grounds her. 

It’s something about the rhythmic swishing and stabbing, the shuffling of feet, her heavy breathing, that makes her fall into a pattern, moving like a song.

At times, she wishes for there to be an opponent at the other end of her sword. If only so that she would no longer feel nothing, instead, letting the burst of adrenaline run through her. Even if they were an enemy, even if she had to kill them. The loneliness, punctuated only by dimwitted conscriptors confused by the tree, is suffocating enough that she wishes even that.

With that thought, Corinne collapses, falling into her rocking chair and letting her sword clatter to the ground at her feet.

She puts her head in her hands.

It’s hard being lonely, but it’s harder to admit that fact to herself than it is to feel it. 

There’s something comforting in loneliness, when it’s been your friend for so long. Corinne barely remembers a time before the tree, a time spent with siblings and parents and pink dresses and cake and as many picture books as she could read. 

She’s long past the point when she’s treasured these memories. She’s long past the point of remembering what pink looks like, or what cake tastes like. All she knows is her schedule, rigidly routine, never-changing, never-ending.

She likes to think it was better, back before her mother died. Truthfully, though, she feels something coiled deep inside of her, a pit of shame and regret that simmers whenever she remembers her. Because the truth is, when her mother was here with her, Corinne wished she would disappear. And now, she has, and Corinne wants nothing more than for her to come back home. 

Is the tree her home?

It’s where she lives, certainly. It’s where she eats and sleeps and reads and conducts her chores. 

But that doesn’t make it home. 

Truthfully, Corinne thinks, she doesn’t have a home. It’s certainly not this tree, and it’s certainly not Trensicourt. Home could have been her mother, but if that is the case, then her home has sunk into the swamp, dead and gone, never to be seen again. 

But still, Corinne will smile. She will be kind, she will be sweet. 

She clings to her mask like a weapon. She knows that when she is rescued, she will be expected to be the same girl she was when she first made her home in the tree. Nobody wants to hear about Corinne, killer without remorse. They want Corinne, soft and innocent and naive and much too skilled with a sword for her own good.

Maybe she is different outside of the tree. Maybe in the real world, she is kind, she is sweet, she is soft spoken. She’s never had to kill someone on the outside, only roll their bodies into the water and scrub blood off of her hands, not even knowing how it got there. 

The blood doesn’t matter, though. Her memories don’t matter, either. What matters is her duty to a higher cause, a duty to a single syllable of a single word that could save the world. The chance that it would, however infinitesimally small, keeps her tethered. 

It doesn’t matter how much she longs to take a boat from the people she’s killed and leave. If she did that, not only would it mean her swift end, it would mean a swift end to the burgeoning, swiftly dwindling rebellion. 

Her home is her protection as much as it’s her prison. 

Still, though. It doesn’t mean Corinne can’t dream. 

And maybe, one day, someday, she’ll be saved. 

But, for now, she has her chair. She has her books. She has her food and her water and her bed. 

She has her knives. 

She has her swords. 

She has her life, and the dreams of a life someday beyond the tree.

**Author's Note:**

> [@bizzybee429 on twitter](https://twitter.com/bizzybee429) [@farfalee on tumblr](http://farfalee.tumblr.com)


End file.
